!! Fix Healer Rescue

[Goji1639]

When you die, you sabotage the entire group. You're fine with that?

Like I said earlier, screwing up with your own character is far more forgivable than forcibly kicking someone else out of the driver seat for their character, taking the controls yourself, then screwing up.

[Gemina]

All reasons why it should be a toggle. With careful planning in a static group you can strain some benefit out of the ability. The fact that it can be used to good effect if the entire group is on the same page on where/when it'll be used is the reason why I'm pushing for a toggle instead of outright having the ability removed.

Also, I'm not sure how it's "humbling" to get rescued. Dying is WAY more humbling and embarrassing, but I'm fine with it. If I screw up I die, I can 100% live with that. Healers forcibly taking control of my character and sabotaging me, whether intentional or not, will always bother me, though.

I am of the mind that it can also be used in statics. That is how it is used to cheese mechanics. Outside of that, when a healer rescues you, it is most likely you that isn't on the same page as everyone else because everyone is sitting in a safe spot except for you.

It's humbling to get rescued unexpectedly because it shines a light on you. Whether you are aware of it or not, the healer is basically telling you that you are about to fail a mechanic. It's just a wee bit faster than typing out, "Hey you over yonder! You are dead AF because you're not standing right here." It can most certainly be humbling to be dead as well. If you're the only one with a weakness icon or vulnerability stack, that can be really humbling too. At least rescue doesn't leave a fat icon on you that last for 60 ticks or more letting everyone know you screwed up. Just like your toggle icon would let everyone know you're unwillingness to work with the game's healers.

It has been mentioned several times now that a toggle feature effectively eliminates any and all reason to have the ability in the game. Don't bother with a nonsensical icon that lets a healer know you can't be rescued. A healer already has enough information to process in a split second before making the decision to make a rescue attempt.

[Packetdancer]

I admit I'm also bewildered. I think I have probably been Rescued less than 10 times in this game total (whether playing healer or not), and as a healer I find myself using Rescue maybe once every other month, usually on sprouts in Crystal Tower raids who don't know the mechanics and are about to die.

This thread makes it sound like Rescue is used constantly, to the point that Goji's describing other players as "the enemy", which seems incredibly extreme.

Yes, other players can be a hindrance or a hazard; I've had plenty of people run around in a panic and drop an AoE on me, drag the trailing-exoflare mechanics across where I'm standing during Dun Scaith, Orbonne Monastery or Copied Factory. I've seen people not interrupt the adds in Puppets' Bunker more times than I want to think (thus inflicting paralysis on me). I've had people run across landmines and obliterate the entire party in Palace of the Dead or Heaven-on-High... sometimes near the end of the deep dungeon.

Heck, I've seen DPS greed more than a few times on E9S, die, and then taken their portion of a spread-or-stack mechanic in addition to my own since they're down, thus instantly dying.

In short, I have racked up quite a few deaths and wipes in this game which stem from someone else doing a thing wrong. But that doesn't mean the other players are "the enemy"; this is a collaborative game, and I'm still trying to work with them to solve things. (Even when sometimes the other players might make me want to tear out my own hair.)

[Packetdancer]

As I've answered "many many times," an icon can be placed on the actual character plate. If you can see where he's standing you can see whether or not Rescue will work, no additional thinking required.

Then you have to replace the status icon on the nameplate (i.e., the 'in party' or 'mentor' status stuff), which would require obscuring the mentor crown; something which, regardless of what the NA/EU opinion of mentors may be, Square-Enix demonstrably doesn't want to do. Otherwise they would not force the mentor crown on when you run mentor roulette; they want it there to indicate "you can ask this person for help on mechanics or how this duty works", and even make you click through a "Yes, I understand this is what the crown means" screen when turning your mentor crown on outside of mentor roulette.

(Whether or not the crown actually serves that purpose is a whole other—probably lengthy—discussion, but that's immaterial here to what Square-Enix's demonstrated intent is.)

So now either the "I cannot be rescued" status hides the mentor crown (something the devs probably don't want), or the mentor crown hides the "I cannot be rescued" status (thus meaning healers have no way of knowing who can or cannot be rescued).

The alternative is to write new nameplate code that has a second status slot specifically for showing this one effect (which seems like a lot of effort for one specific use case), OR using the existing status effect buff/debuff system that already exists in game (which does not involve much development effort, but has been pointed out to be a flawed way of communicating something as vital as "I have disabled your capability to use certain of your abillities").

Moreover, many, many players disable other-player nameplates to avoid visual clutter, especially during alliance raids. If you only see the HP bar, the status icon will be missing entirely anyway, so it's quite possible to see where someone is standing and still not have this communicated, thus making the entire proposed solution moot in that case to start with.

If you grant Player A the power to disable Player B's abilities, it is good to communicate that to Player B in a clear manner. The issues with communicating that in a clear and reliable manner have been reiterated in this thread, multiple times and sometimes (admittedly, probably most often by me) in potentially-exhausting detail. There is not a good quick and dirty solution which addresses those.

Either you have a hackish half-assed solution which causes most healers not to want to bother with the ability because they have no idea if it'll work or not, and—since we're discussing optimal battle performance and not wasting GCDs that could be otherwise used to damage and such—just use that time for something guaranteed to work and more efficient instead, or you come up with a more detailed and in-depth solution to communicate "I am disabling these abilities of yours" and look at whether it's something more generally applicable to other skills.

Or—as a number of healers have proposed in this thread—you just say "Rescue is causing too much trouble, remove it entirely, give healers something new and cool, bid farewell to the situations where Rescue does benefit in the name of having DPS not resent being pulled to safety."

I'm going to be a little blunt, Goji: you're coming across right now as though you really want Rescue out of the game, but you don't want to actually be in the position of saying "I don't want you other players to have this ability anymore". Which I understand; saying "I want to take away this thing from other people" isn't a comfortable position to be in, and it's more comfortable to frame it as "I don't want to have this particular mechanic able to affect me". But you keep throwing out there that this is a "simple" solution because one game did it another way.

But the two games are not the same; even you note that, saying that you prefer FFXIV to WoW for other reasons. Solutions are not interchangeable, especially in high-end content, because high-end content differs even more than casual content between the two games.

And there are more than 20 pages of people explaining why the hypothetical "simple" solutions cause other problems. Just reiterating that you think it's simple to solve does not actually do away with the complications being brought up, and you reiterating that no, no, really, it's simple doesn't actually feel like you're moving the discussion forward. It instead feels dismissive of the various flaws and concerns that the various healers in this thread have pointed out. Which comes across as though you don't actually want a solution to the problem... you just want it to go away without having to actually consider the implications of doing so.

Which, I suppose, isn't too surprising; referring to your fellow players—particularly healers—as 'the enemy" doesn't really make it feel like you want to find a collaborative solution. Whether I'm reading 'too much' into that term or not, it is a term that frames the entire discussion in an adversarial light; whether healers are "the enemy" or "an obstacle" or "a hindrance" or whatever, it frames them as something you strive against, rather than as fellow players who you want to work with.

Asking for a toggle is hardly extreme, and there have been no compelling points made against the idea; so I'm continuing to promote it. That's all that's happening with me here.

"Compelling" is in the eye of the beholder here. I find many of the arguments being made by the other healers in this thread quite compelling, both as to why Rescue can be useful right now, and why your proposed methods of dealing with it are flawed.

You may consider all of the issues and concerns brought up irrelevant; that's fine, as everyone can have an opinion. But if party A says "I want party B to no longer be able to do X" and absolutely every response from party B earns "Yeah, I don't find that compelling", then it's not a discussion; it's just party A insisting on something.

And at that point, it doesn't matter if party B says anything or not; it will have no effect on party A, so party B might as well just shrug and walk away.

(And, honestly... that's probably what I ought to do here.)

[van_arn]

Dunno, if I noticed a DPS intentionally stacking vuln I'd rescue them too.

If they flipped out I'd make sure to use it on cooldown.

This assumes I didn't just kick them for intentionally stacking vuln.

[Bsrking5]

Its nice to use. To bad the uses are pretty rare and the target is usually too brain dead to learn from a death.

[Goji1639]

Snip

Placing an extra icon on the character plate and using the Arms length effect with a slightly different condition on their face should both be very simple to implement. Spaghetti code is generally only a problem when implementing new functions, not utilizing existing ones.

Regardless, if SE were to come forward and say it's too difficult to be worth it then these counterpoints of yours would be valid, but all you're doing now is arguing in bad faith. These aren't good points against implementing a toggle; they're lazy arguments made purely for the sake of arguing. I could jump into any thread on this board that's making a request, no matter how simple, and argue it MIGHT be too much work to be worth it so they should just forget about it.

Also, why would I want the ability removed when a toggle accomplishes everything I need? For me the ability would be effectively removed, and everyone else would still get to use it if they want. That's all I've been vying for and your little attempt to paint me as being vindictive is just more bad faith argument from you. You're not trying to have a discussion; you're just trying for some kind of petty "gotcha" moment

As for me being dismissive; I haven't just been saying arguments aren't compelling, I've been explaining in detail why they aren't compelling. You saying World of Warcraft is a different game [/end thought] isn't compelling on it's own. Try explaining why WoW's endgame works fine with a toggle but this game wouldn't. FFXIV's endgame is statics running progression; they can just turn Rescue on. The rest is DF roulettes where most players aren't very good with the ability anyways, but would still have the option to use it on people who actually want it.

So, what exactly is the problem?

Saying "most Healers just would stop using it," also isn't compelling because it's not quantifiable at all. It's basically you speaking in bad faith for the entire community, which adds nothing to the discussion.

[Doozer]

Holding..........

What, a sneeze?

Though this reminds me, yesterday I was in WoD for the ol' relic grind and had a tank that loved to just provoke off the other ones and tank bosses in the wrong place, so when we were fighting the Five-headed Dragon, they wouldn't stop pointing it at the center so I went and stood where the other tank was that was trying to get it, then Rescued our tank over to them so they tanked it there. Surprisingly, they stayed. Yet another use for it. Who knew.

[Goji1639]

What, a sneeze?

Though this reminds me, yesterday I was in WoD for the ol' relic grind and had a tank that loved to just provoke off the other ones and tank bosses in the wrong place, so when we were fighting the Five-headed Dragon, they wouldn't stop pointing it at the center so I went and stood where the other tank was that was trying to get it, then Rescued our tank over to them so they tanked it there. Surprisingly, they stayed. Yet another use for it. Who knew.

lol, that Holding.... was actually just a placeholder. I didn't want to type out an entire response, hit post and then lose it all when it tells me I'm still at my post limit.

[Doozer]

lol, that Holding.... was actually just a placeholder. I didn't want to type out an entire response, hit post and then lose it all when it tells me I'm still at my post limit.

ctrl+x or ctrl+c is your friend.